Thursday, December 06, 2012

Celso Ad Castillo, 1943 - 2012

One of the greatest has
passed. Celso Ad Castillo was born on
the 12th
of September, 1943 in Sinaloan, Laguna, son of lawyer and writer
Dominador Ad Castillo, and Martha Adolfo. He graduated with a BA in
English Literature, married and had children, at least one of
which--Christopher Ad Castillo--followed in his footsteps to become a
filmmaker. Ad Castillo didn't start out to be a director himself; he really began writing for komiks,
publishing--with his father's help--a magazine where he wrote every
story under different aliases. He was commissioned to do the script to a James Bond
knockoff (James Ban-dong, 1964) so successful it spawned a sequel (Dr. Yes, 1965). He eventually directed his first
film--Misyong
Mapanganib (Mission
Dangerous,
1965)--at the
relatively young age of twenty-one. Asedillo
(1971), possibly Ad Castillo's finest early film, set the template for Filipino
movie legend Fernando Poe, Jr.'s persona, as deadly gunslinger and
champion of the poor. His best work was yet to come, but even this
early on you could see his mastery of film language. Poe's action
movies are almost always well-produced, but this is the rare picture
of his that shows touches of genuine poetry--deep orange sunsets;
elderly villagers expressively lit and photographed; iconic shots of
Poe on his horse climbing an impossibly steep slope (the camera
tilted to make it look even more impossible), his body bent forward
as if to keep from falling off. At one point Poe reads a
crucial letter from his arch-nemesis, offering parley: Ad Castillo
cuts to the people outside waiting for the results of the fateful
letter, and as they chat Castillo drops all sound except the wind
blowing. The effect is remarkably ominous.

Ad Castillo's Tag-Ulan
sa Tag-Araw (Monsoon
Rain in Summer, 1975)
is about a young man (Christopher de Leon) who dorms with his uncle
and aunt and falls in love with his cousin (played by a waiflike
Vilma Santos). Ad Castillo tackles the sensational subject of incest
by framing the two lovers' relationship as a kind of innocent affair,
taking place in a countryside Eden.

It's the kind of hackneyed
concept that really shouldn't work; the result ought to be less like
D.H. Lawrence and more like Emmanuelle.
But Ad Castillo happens to have one of the most prodigiously talented
eye in all of Philippine cinema, and the heedlessly lyrical manner in
which he shot Tag-Ulan
transforms softcore porn into something like art. Every rainfall,
every shaft of light, every leafy shadow caught by his largely
handheld camera makes you catch your breath; there is lovemaking without nudity, yet Ad Castillo shoots with such throbbing intensity
you are nevertheless aroused.

Ad Castillo was also incredibly versatile,
from classic action to sensual psychodrama to, of course, horror. His
Patayin Mo sa Sindak si
Barbara (Let's
Frighten Barbara to Death,
1974), about a dead
woman's determination to wreak unholy vengeance on her poor sister,
is not a perfect film or even a particularly good one, certainly not
the finest of Ad Castillo's work, but after a first half of playing
with devil dolls and cheesy sound effects the film lays aside the
childish toys and tries a different tack--silence, shadows, the
stretching of a moment of tension to sadistic length, revealing
itself in its second half as arguably the most viscerally frightening
film in all of Philippine cinema. At one point Ad Castillo evokes the
scene where Arbogast (Martin Balsam) climbs the stairs in Alfred
Hitchcock's Psycho
(1960)--only unlike many a Hitchcock imitator, hemanages to pull it
off.

Ad
Castillo's Ang
Pinakamagandang Hayop sa Balat ng Lupa
(The Most Beautiful
Creature on the Face of the Earth,
1974) is an unabashed remake of David Lean's epic
boxoffice failure Ryan's
Daughter (1970); it
nevertheless has a coastal village sensuality that need not apologize
to the underrated original. In Return
of the Dragon (same
year) he took a comedian famous for parodying Bruce Lee (the physical
resemblance is uncanny) and forged a remarkably straightforward
exercise in Filipino chop-socky,
complete with fight scenes staged as if within an azure crystal bowl,
the sky overhead an unnaturally vivid blue. In Lihim
ni Madonna (Secrets
of Madonna, 1997), one
of the most beautiful actresses in Philippine cinema (his taste in
women was legendary) runs about an abandoned mansion in a state of
perpetual distress, wearing a transparent nightie--a laughable
premise, only he uses the gothic scare tactics ofPatayin
sa Sindak si Barbara
to keep the audience off-balance, and ends the film with a
magic-realist finale that evokes Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One
Hundred Years of Solitude.

With
Ang Alamat ni
Julian Makabayan (The
Legend of Julian Makabayan,
1979) Ad Castillo and his cinematographer Romy Vitug were
accused of imitating the naturalist sunlight Nestor
Almendros createdfor Terence Malick's Days
of Heaven (1978). If
the films share a superficial similarity (both involve extensive outdoor shooting) the resemblance ends there--I doubt
if Malick possesses the showmanship to tell his story as a series
of interviews, faux-documentary
style, or the effrontery to pull a corpse out from inside a
split-open water buffalo. With Pagputi
ng Uwak, Pagitim ng Tagak
(When the Crow Turns
White, the Heron Black,
1978) Ad Castillo
proves he can combine the aesthetic of period epics with the energy of political firebranding--a
volatile mix--the unstable whole held together by beautiful folk music.

As for his masterpiece
Burlesk Queen
(1977)--here's an excerpt of what I wrote about a moment in the film
(Chato's deflowering), for Chris Fujiwara's TheLittle Black Book of Movies: “Celso
uses Jessie's smooth back as both veil and metaphor for Chato's
nudity, the clothes dropping from overhead hangers as metaphor for
her failing inhibitions; what makes the scene erotic and nakedly
emotional is Chato's face, glimpsed over Jessie's left shoulder as
terror (the widened eyes), greed (the remote expression, as if she
were a starving man wolfing down a steak), pain (the startled look of
one who has been kicked in the crotch), guilt (the tears) and finally
pleasure (the bit lower lip) flit across and mingle in her eyes.”

Ad Castillo was not a genius;
he was more interesting than that. His films were often incoherent,
often inconsistent, sometimes because he didn't have the money,
sometimes because he told stories that way--apparently narrativewas secondary to him, an excuse to flex his prodigious filmmaking
muscles. Of his greatest works--which
include but are not limited to Ang
Alamat ni Julian Makabayan;
Pagputi ng Uwak, Pagitim ng Tagak; andBurlesk Queen--his
imagery burned incandescent, his filmmaking technique was second to
none. If Mike De Leon is Philippine
Cinema's mad intellectual, Lino Brocka its fiery social realist,
Ishmael Bernal its skeptic-satirist, Mario O'Hara its nightmare
scenarist, Celso was its poet laureate--his images were Filipino lyricism incarnate. His passing is an unimaginable
loss.

Thanks for the post. I have never heard of Celso Ad Castillo, but after reading this I'd really like to see his films. Are any of them available as Region 1 DVDs with subtitles? I did a quick search and didn't find anything.

Snooky Serna

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Philippine cinema has its share of gold and manure, artists and poseurs; because the average Filipino film costs a little over US$250,000 (in 2004 currency) and is usually shot on a stretch of about twenty shooting days (or less), the manure is often more odious than what passes for commercial filmmaking in Hollywood nowadays; on the other hand, because budget and schedule are often so small and tight, the rare gold nugget found seems all the more impressive, bordering perhaps on the miraculous. Thanks to those nuggets, I still believe in miracles.